Rich Nation Hypocrisy Accelerating Global Heating

Rich nations’ climate hypocrisy is accelerating global heating, pushing the planet closer to irreversible catastrophe, with its worst consequences borne by the poorest, both countries and peoples.

Making the Global Financial Architecture Work for Emerging Markets and Developing Countries (EMDEs)

The world is facing multiple crises that must be tackled quickly, with innovative approaches and brave decisions. The global financial architecture is an area that needs reform and thinking outside the box. The system created 80 years ago is not able to deal with today’s problems that range from climate change to pandemics, to increasing inequality, to conflict and fragility, to food insecurity and poverty.

Secondary Education Is a Bottleneck in Brazil

Alice went for eight weeks without Portuguese language classes after starting her first year of high school on Feb. 5 in this Brazilian city. Her chemistry teacher taught only two classes and disappeared. But the worst part is the classroom without air conditioning in the heat of more than 35 degrees Celsius some days during the southern hemisphere summer.

WHO Calls for More Data on Violence Against Older Women and Women With Disabilities

Older women and women with disabilities experience abuse that is unique to their demographics, yet they are underrepresented in national and global databases, according to findings shared by the World Health Organization (WHO).

How Women in Ahmedabad Slums Are Beating Back Climate’s Deadly Heat

Seema Mali is desperate. She has no defences against this changing climate’s brutal heat. Mali makes fresh flower garland the whole year, but her summer income has been plummeting by 30 percent over the last 8–10 years due to the extreme heat.

It’s Africa’s Time To Shine, says UN Under Secretary Claver Gatete

With 20 percent of the global population and vast untapped natural resources, not forgetting its human capital, it is time Africa had its rightful seat at the global table, the United Nations Under Secretary and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Claver Gatete, has called.

African Bloc Can Pursue Feminist Foreign Policy in Global Governance Reform Push

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women will this month bring together government, civil society, and the private sector to strategize on the acceleration of gender equality, through strengthening institutions and financing from a gender perspective.

International Women’s Day, 2024

 
On March 8th, we celebrate International Women’s Day. A day to honour the resilience, achievements, and potential of women worldwide. The world faces crises—geopolitical conflicts, poverty, and climate change.

Funding, Policy Changes Could Result in Countries Reaping Benefit of Migration

Amid an escalation of global conflict and climate change-induced displacements, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is escalating its donor campaign. For the first time since the organization’s formation in 1951, the IOM says it is "proactively approaching all partners to fund this vital appeal," at a time when the number of migrants making perilous intercontinental journeys has increased.

The World Social Forum: The counterweight to the World Economic Forum

This week the 2024 annual meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Nepal. There were fifty thousand participants from over 90 countries, exchanging strategies to address the multiple global crises, from climate catastrophes to unfettered capitalism, inequality, social injustice, wars and conflict.

Forced Migration Grows, Justice Withers, Say Activists at World Social Forum

As involuntary migration rises around the world, partly in response to the impacts of climate change, justice for those leaving their homes and families to earn a living is largely missing, said activists meeting at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Kathmandu on Sunday.

Inequality Also Afflicts Clean Energy in Latin America

The specter of blackouts hovers over the Mexican city of La Paz, the capital of the state of Baja California Sur in Mexico's far northwestern corner, as summer approaches, due to increased electricity demand from air conditioning and insufficient capacity in the local grid.

World Social Forum Insists: Another World is Possible!

These are the worst of times, but they can become the best of times, said speaker Dr. Walden Bello, seeking to inspire thousands of progressives who gathered for the World Social Forum (WSF) in Kathmandu on Thursday with the planet under clouds of armed conflict and assaults on democracy.

World Social Forum Seeks to Reemerge as an Influential Gathering of Diversity

The World Social Forum (WSF) is today "more necessary than ever," according to Oded Grajew, promoter and co-founder of the global civil society meeting - a festival of diversity that has not yet succeeded in fomenting or designing the "other possible world" that it predicted when it was created and adopted that motto.

Moimuna Nursing Institute Ushers Hope for Vulnerable Rural Girls in Bangladesh

After passing her secondary school certificate (SCC) in 2019, Sweety Akter went door-to-door to collect money to enroll in a college, but she wasn't successful. Born to an extremely poor family in Fultala village under Baliadangi upazila in Thakurgaon district, Akter saw her dream of studying fading as she was unable to enroll in a college because of a lack of funding, despite her good results at school.

How Soil Microbes Could save the World

The 500 per cent increase in global agricultural productivity over the past 60 years has largely been made possible by the scientific advances of the “Green Revolution” – from the ability to breed higher yielding varieties to improvements in farm inputs, especially fertiliser.

The Spectre of Migration: A conversation with Hammoud Gallego

Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party begins with the now worn-out phrase: “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre”. Nowadays the word “communism” could easily be substituted by “migration”. All over Europe, politicians claim that Europe is being destroyed by migrants. In country after country, ghosts of yesterday are awakened. Parliaments include xenophobic politicians who might be considered as inheritors of demagogs who once dragged Europeans into hate and bloodbaths.

Poverty and Inequality Mark Rural Life in Latin America

Rural life in Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be marked by poverty and inequality compared to the towns and cities where the vast majority of the population lives. A new focus on rural life in the region could help reveal and address the challenges and neglect faced by people in the countryside.

Higher Education in Central America: Poor Quality and Unaffordable for the Poor

Decades of civil wars and a lack of long-term public education policies, among other problems, have made higher education in Central America precarious and costly in general. In this region, made up of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama, home to some 50 million inhabitants, the quality of education offered by public and private universities is poor, while costs are high even for those who can afford them.

Beyond the Farm: How Empowering Women Farmers Drives Change in Jordan and Beyond

Dr. Zeinab Al-Momany, a prominent social entrepreneur, sheds light on the journey of empowering women farmers in Jordan and the Arab world, where women often work long hours for low pay and lack labour recognition.